Anti-Social Tendencies

[from 7/22/09]

I’m about to mention Dear Abby in this column! Here goes.

Sunday, Abigail had a reader tell her about encountering an old friend as a homeless guy going through trash and yelling at passersby, and the reader wondered what s/he should have done. Abigail’s answer included the sentence, “What your old friend needs far more than a handout is to get into a program that will help him/her get off the streets and medicated back to reality.”

I could tell a long sad story about old friends of mine who now can be seen going through trash and yelling at passersby, including me. I could tell you how often I see one of them walking around barefoot in pajamas that were obviously issued by a hospital, so I am sure he has been “medicated back to reality” on several occasions. But I’ll refrain, as it’s more fun for me to kick at the idea of reality itself, and complain about socialization.

I am an anti-socializationist. I have been an anti-socializationist all my life. I haven’t always called it that, of course. For instance, at 14 a school counselor said I was acting maladjusted. She said, “You want to be adjusted, don’t you?” I thought about this real hard, harder than I now think it deserved. I don’t remember what I said to her, but by the end of the day I had decided that being maladjusted was exactly what I wanted.

Later I learned that, to be adjusted, you have to be socialized. To be maladjusted is therefore to be un-socialized. To be deliberately, willfully, un-socialized, is then to be anti-socializationist. I further learned that society, however, is anti-anti-socializationist, so you have to learn ways to fly under the radar.

By way of illustration, the other day I was walking with Anitra “Rice is Not a Vegetable” Freeman, and a non-Anitraish friend, up Second Avenue, past outdoor diners and imbibers, and the non-Anitra said something extremely anti-socialized, loud enough that the strangers could hear. Immediately, reflexively, without waiting for anyone to object to the blasphemer among us, I blurted out, “IT’S ALRIGHT EVERYBODY, WE’RE ARTISTS!” Once you learn to do that, it never leaves you.

The whole idea that if you yell at total strangers or near strangers you must be distant from reality really strikes me as absurd, particularly in this context. The man is going through trash FOR HIS DINNER. Wouldn’t it be realistic for him to be irritable about that?

A little later I brought up how unfair it was that people who like people and make friends get all the breaks and I had this exchange with Anitra:

Me: You know what? Hermits have rights, too.

Anitra “Devilishly Advocating” Freeman: No. It’s like paying taxes. If you won’t do your part in associating with society, society shouldn’t have to support you.

Me: What about whiny babies? We support them and they don’t pay taxes.

Anitra: But they associate with people. They smile and make contact.

Me: So, in summary, it’s all about associating, not how you associate. You can be a whiny needy selfish bastard. So long as you keep in touch, someone’s going to care enough to toss you some Gerbers. But don’t think you can just walk away, turning your back on the powerful society.

To put it another way, the “reality” is, it doesn’t matter whether you want to be adjusted or not, you’re going to be. Being adjusted might mean being medicated back to Pluto or it might mean being medicated to Prancing Happy Pony Land, but reality is not where the medication takes you, reality is that they make you take it.

Reality is, there are no nuts and berries to forage on in the Big City. That’s because the Big City is sick in the head and in dire need of adjustment. It’s not as if nuts and berries wouldn’t grow here. Someone has to medicate the Big City back to reality.